China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday called on Japan to take concrete steps to gain trust from its Asian neighbors following UNESCO's decision to give the country's Meiji industrial sites World Heritage status.
UNESCO on Sunday conferred World Heritage status to 23 facilities at 11 different locations in Japan representative of the country's industrial revolution under Emperor Meiji (1868-1910).
Tokyo's bid, which involves a steelworks, a shipbuilding yard and a coal mine, had caused controversy as seven of the sites were once used as centers of deportation and forced labor during Japan's occupation of China and South Korea.
The decision reached at a meeting in Germany came after Japan's concession to Seoul on forced labor. Japanese representative Kuni Sato acknowledged at the Sunday meeting that Koreans "were brought against their will and were forced to work under severe conditions" at some of the Japanese industrial sites during the 1940s, reported the Japan Times.
Sato also said Japan is prepared to take steps to remember the victims, including setting up an information center.
The Ministry's spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing that the Chinese authorities are aware of the decision. As for Japan's pledge, Hua urged Japan to use actions to gain the trust of its neighboring Asian countries and the world community. Despite Japan's claims, analysts remain skeptical of the Japanese government's stance on history.
"The acknowledgement is in fact a compromise the Japanese government made to South Korea. This does not mean that there is a fundamental change in Japan's stance toward all of its wartime history," Liu Jiangyong, vice dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.
Hundreds of Chinese were forced to work during World War II in some of the UNESCO-listed sites, which include a coal mine in Nagasaki. The Xinhua News Agency earlier slammed the bid as "whitewashing" Tokyo's militaristic past.
"The real issue is not whether those sites are listed or not, but about Japan's attitude on its wartime past and whether it would use [the World Heritage status] to honor its previous aggression," Liu noted, adding that the stance on history is an important aspect of Sino-Japanese relations.
Some of the facilities, such as the Yahata steelworks and the Nagasaki shipbuilding yard, are still partly in operation.
